Known for telling sarcastic slice-of-life stories with a supernatural and bloody bent, Richard Bates Jr. is no stranger to horror-comedy. However, the writer and director's latest film, King Knight, departs from this trend and instead tells a tale about the healing powers of an inclusive community. That community just so happens to be a SoCal group of Wiccans, a fact Bates revels in throughout the film while ensuring no disrespect to his eclectic pagans. Centered around coven Priest Thorn (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Priestess Willow (Angela Sarafyan), the film follows what happens when the coven learns of Thorn's secret past.

Ahead of its debut at Fantasia's International Film Festival, Bates sat down with CBR to discuss the film's loving depiction of Wiccans, its themes of authenticity and acceptance, and what it was like bringing genre legends like Ray Wise and Barbara Crampton to the cast.

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CBR: This is definitely not the first time that Matthew Gray Gubler has starred as a lead in your films. What keeps drawing you back to working with him?

Richard Bates Jr.: The fact of the matter is, he's one of my best friends. It's a lot of work making a movie and when you're working with people you are friends with, it's just so much more fun. When I put this together, I kind of had a feeling that he would make a really good Thorn. I called him to ask if he'd do it, and he said, "Sure" and I went from there.

That was the fun part of making a movie like this. When you're a director, you don't usually get a say in everything, you get a say but not the final say. With something like this, I was the casting director. I negotiated the actor's contracts with their agents and everything, so I got to make sure everyone in the movie is who I wanted to be in the movie. So very, very fun.

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I really like that the structure of it felt so much like a storybook. There's of course the physical opening of the storybook at the start of the movie, and that vibe continues throughout the film.

Yeah, it's kind of a modern-day Faust tale. Everything takes place in a heightened version of reality, which I guess all my movies do. But with this one, I made it to make myself happy and remind myself why I love making movies and what it felt like making movies with friends in my parents' backyard as a kid. Usually, I take a much more cynical approach to the characters. Sometimes, the characters are even representations of ideas more than they are people. But with this movie, I tried to just erase all my cynicism and approach each character with nothing but love.

I thought of movies that just make me happy. My sweet spot would be '90s-era John Waters. He made this movie called Pecker. Anytime I'm sad, I watch that movie. It's silly and provocative and all that, but there's this underlying sweetness to it, and it's because he loves these people. I knew if we made it about witches -- I love witches. The idea was to show and treat witches like any other characters in a comedy rather than evil. The people [in this film] really appealed to me. At the end of the day, the whole point is that we're all searching for the same thing. We're not that different.

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I really liked how the Wiccans in this film are super loving and inclusive and are always trying to grow to be better people. What kind of research did you do for this film? At times, it does feel like you poke a little fun at Wiccan practices, but never like you're mean-spirited about it.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the first documentary films I made in college was about this Wiccan store in New York and that was my first introduction to the Wiccan religion. Still, half of my library are books on the topic. A lot of my family is Southern Baptist, which never really appealed to me. So I've always been interested in sort of alternative religions. To be quite honest, of any religion, Wiccan speaks the most to me across the board.

The idea is, I'm not going to try and change anyone's mind. I'm not going to preach to them about Wiccans. I'm not going to take a reverential approach, in the sense that like, this is who you should be, this is the only way to treat them... No one likes when they're being told how to feel. Instead, they're just shown these lovely, caring people. So they're more open to thinking about things that way.

Certainly, before I made it, I asked several friends who are witches to read it, to make sure that it was funny, and not at their expense. There were little tweaks that I've made in the script, just to make sure. I would be mortified if I hurt someone's feelings, which is funny because sometimes I make movies and I'm out to hurt someone's feelings. Not in this case.

Look, they are traditionalists in every religion, even in Wicca. King Knight's are sort of eclectic Wiccans, which means they pull from a variety of spiritual practices and combine them, whereas traditional Wiccans don't. It was really important to me, and to everyone involved, to make sure that it was all in the spirit of fun.

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There's also, I would say,  a queer reading in this. Aside from having out characters who are fully fleshed and not defined by just being gay, there's also this "coming out of the broom closet" metaphor throughout the film. Did you intend or hope queer audiences would connect to that?

I was watching various documentaries on witchcraft and, within all this, I've heard that term used by witches, time and time again. So that is actually a term that I pulled from actual witches and I found really sort of beautiful. Like, "Okay, that's great. We can use and hopefully add that into the message of making everyone feel included and feel better."

The whole joy of making a movie like this is to make it for people across the board -- gay, straight bi, doesn't matter. It's for people who don't feel like they're getting a lot of movies made for them. That's like the sweet spot. That's what makes my career worth doing for me. There's no more joy than in that. I've recently had people say things to me that movies of mine were really impactful, and I don't take that lightly. I really want I want to make a movie that makes some kid happy and feel better about themselves. That makes me feel better.

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Without spoiling it, there's a really trippy scene with Ray Wise in the film. What was your favorite part about having him on set and in the role of Merlin?

I think this is the fourth movie I've done with Ray? He's like my hero. I grew up watching Twin Peaks and I loved the movie. But, Ray's enthusiasm... When someone you admire and respect says that you're all right, it feels really good. And Ray, he's just the man. Merlin is kind of inspired by this combination of my dad, my favorite film school teacher Ezra Sacks and Ray himself. So when I got the idea for the role, I called Ray and I was like, "Hey, who wouldn't want to see you play Merlin in a movie?" And then Ray, completely dead-serious, responded, "You know something? I'd like to see that myself." And then he did it.

After a stellar debut at 2021's Fantasia Film Festival, King Knight hits select theaters, VOD, and Digital on Feb. 17.

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